The Weekend (Belatedly) in Review

Every other weekend America's Unofficial Ambassadors comes up with planned trips and activities as part of our program. Visiting the Buddhist monastery, white water rafting, and Borobudur are examples of these trips. However, that means every other weekend Sarah, Suraiya, and I are left to fend for ourselves. And apparently to our coordinator's surprise, we actually do things other than sit in the house.

The AUA interns out for dinner with other foreign women we've met who are working near Yogyakarta.

Saturday we attended a traditional Javanese wedding for the daughter of the couple who live next door to Dian Interfidei. They had invited us a few days prior, and as it turns out weddings here are more about pleasing the neighbors around you than much else. Translation: so much free food. Even for days before the wedding they provide food for all of their neighbors (us).

Tanto, myself, the groom and bride, Suraiya, and Sarah.

We waited out the afternoon heat (and power outages) with long naps before heading to Malioboro for dinner. We ate dinner and then met up with a friend from Holland for the grand opening of Art Jog, Yogyakarta's summer art festival / gallery. Hundreds of people, literally hundreds, packed like cattle into this hot building and slowly pressed their way from one piece of artwork to another. I found a little airconditioning machine near this one piece of art and stood there for as long as the pressing crowd would let me, enjoying the foggy coolness that would brush past me for a few seconds when the people between the airconditioner and myself would shuffle onward. A local not much older than myself looked at me and, after accessing my whiteness, pointed to the airconditioner before speaking to me in English and said, "This. This, is art.". The exhibit was impressively large and was a collection on Indonesian's feelings on democracy, politics, and corruption. (This is a popular theme right now as the presidential elections are coming up next month and there's a lot of interesting talk going around.) Also, we recognized a few pieces from Malcom's gallery opening the few nights prior. 

Sunday started lazily as we eventually made it out of the house and walked a few kilometers to a cafe for brunch. We met another international friend there who suggested we do some batik shopping that afternoon. And so we wandered Jogja finding batik and silver trinkets to bring back to the US. Our two weeks of Bahasa lessons served us well as we chatted with taxi drivers who drove us to different off the map artisan shops where we'd haggle for a decent price.

Women applying wax as part of the process of making batik.

We closed our evening with a gathering at our friend Tanto's house where we sat around in the backyard over delicious food and conversing in a blend of English, Bahasa Indonesia, Javanese, German, and Romanian with just as interesting a blend of people. Life might be calm, but it's never boring!